Conifer tree stumps are a prospective source of bioenergy, but there are considerable uncertainties and risks associated with this forestry practice, and environmental consequences of stump harvesting are little studied in the Baltic countries. One of the major concerns is related to the risk of nutrient leaching that may cause pollution of watercourses and decline of tree growth in the next forest generation. The main aim of the present study was to estimate the effect of stump harvesting on general soil and soil solution parameters in three clear-cut areas located in Hylocomiosa site type (dominant tree species prior to clearfelling – Picea abies L. (Karst.)) over a period of 6 years after the stump removal. Two types of treatments were compared: whole-tree harvesting with only above-ground biomass removed (WTH) and whole-tree harvesting combined with the stump removal (WTH+SB). We found no acidification effect of soil and soil solution. Soil C and N stocks six years after harvesting were similar in the plots with and without stump removal, and demonstrated similar pattern of change in both studied treatments (WTH and WTH+SB). Nutrient content and patterns of change varied with the site and year, suggesting that the effects are rather site- than treatment-specific.

Forests and woodlands provide a wide variety of ecosystem services that are usually classified within three categories: provisioning services, regulating (supporting) services and cultural services. While provisioning and regulating services are widely analysed, there is a lack of information about the cultural ecosystem services, particularly some sub-categories of these. In this study, we have focused on inspiration for creativity as a sub-category of cultural ecosystem services provided by forests and analysed the depiction of forest ecosystems in landscape paintings of Latvian artists. It may be concluded that forest ecosystems serve as an important source of inspiration for creativity and art, as may be seen in the landscape paintings of Latvian artists of the 20th century. Characteristic landscape features of birth and living places of the artists are reflected in their works. The performed analysis is the first of its kind in Latvia, and it may be further expanded, either by incorporating other aspects of creativity or adding economic dimension, for example, by surveying the art market.

The aim of the paper is to determine the relationship between meteorological drought and hydrological drought in the agricultural basin of the River Osa (northern Poland) in the years 1966-2015. Meteorological droughts appear as a result of insufficient amount or lack of atmospheric precipitation. As a consequence of meteorological droughts occurrences, there appear hydrological droughts which are characterized by low discharges of a river. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Runoff Index (SRI) indicators were used for the identification of droughts at various accumulation periods, i.e. 1, 3, 6, 9 and 12 months. In the years 1966-2015, there were identified from 63 (SPI-1) up to 10 meteorological droughts (SPI-12), while hydrological droughts – from 22 (SPI-1) to 8 (SPI-6, 9 and 12). The strongest relationship between the two kinds of droughts occurred in the periods of accumulation from 9 to 12 months. The values of the correlation coefficient between the meteorological and hydrological droughts were above 0.5 in those cases. Those indicators can be used for a system of early drought warning, which is of particular importance for crop production in agricultural areas. Long-lasting meteorological droughts contribute to increase of water intake for irrigation purposes, thus deepening the hydrological drought. As a consequence of the prolonged and intense hydrological drought, further irrigation may be impossible due to too low river discharges.

Wet areas in agricultural lands are usually not fully or properly managed due to problematic accessibility by heavy machinery and are associated with lower crop yields. There are neither studies regarding spatial distribution of wet agricultural areas in Latvia nor large scale soil maps. Being aware of these wet areas, it would be possible to plan actions for effective management of these areas, starting with a scale of landscape. A geographic information system model could serve as an assistant for decision-making, such as, a direct support for the management of amelioration systems, change of land use and management patterns or granting support payments. Remote sensing data like Sentinel-2 satellite images and LiDAR (Light detecting and ranging) technology can be used to identify local wet areas. The focus of this article is to evaluate different remote sensing indices and methods that can be used to identify wet areas in agricultural lands using open access data and software. From 52 indices, which were analysed with soil moisture field measurements in 33 sample plots, only two of them showed statistical significance in linear regression model (p is less than 0.05): normalized height model in resolution of 25 meters (r2 =0.45) and visible blue spectral band in April (r2 =0.39). Results from this study help to focus on different aspects of remote sensing data usage and methodology for future improvements in order to fully implement LiDAR and Sentinel-2 data for identification of wet areas in agricultural lands.

The traditional valuation of real estate in the field of civil engineering did not include the uncertainty of human behaviour, which cannot be explained by the traditional approach. There are different valuation methods for real estate appraisal, which are basically classified into three groups as a classic, statistical and advanced. In this article, we estimated the different housing price models using the sample of 37 residential apartments in Riga, Latvia, October 2018. In order to evaluate if there is a possible association between the variables involved in relation to the property price, the analytical data were analysed by correlation analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA), regression analysis, covariance analysis (ANCOVA), principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis. The models estimation results show that using ANCOVA models for the prices forecasting the model fitting to data is less than 58%. The preliminary results of this study suggest that the estimated properties can be distributed in 4 groups, depending on number of rooms, area and age. In addition, the decision tree was created based on algorithms (J48) and a preliminary definition of the best rules was made. The decision tree presents an accuracy of 84% with 31 accepted instances for a total of 37 currently classified instances.

Society aims to develop frames for recognizing important geological and geomorphological sites and features or landscapes within their national and even transnational boundaries. Earth heritage sites educate the general public and preserve cultural and environmental matters. New trends of sustainable development, importance of site conservation are demanding that landforms and landscapes, rocks, minerals, fossils, soils should be protected legally, as they give understanding about the evolution of Mother Earth in local and regional context to generations. The Geopark concept was developed in cooperation with UNESCO and followed a large number of requests to UNESCO from all over the world, from geological institutions and geoscientists and non-governmental organizations, and it became extremely popular and influential to preserve those geological heritage areas, nowadays still recognized only nationally or not at all. This paper aims to give comprehensive overview of existing geoparks in the Baltic Sea Region, as well as analyse aspiring geoparks and unpublished initiatives of potential geopark (Livonia and Vooremaa) eventual establishment in frames of cultural and landscape preservation context. Criteria, requirements and earlier studies are given in context. The geoparks should mainly contain cultural and educational purpose while targeting the least possible damage in preservational aspect.

The research paper focuses on description of the pig (Sus scrofa domestica) farming tendencies in Latvia with the scope to give feeding characteristics in relation to emission outcome. In the recent years the concentration of pigs in farms with a herd size more than 10,000 has increased. With increase of the large farms the average feed consumption is more affected by one operator. Efficient utilization of nutrients content in feeding is crucial to meet environmental goals. It is one of the steps to achieve Nutrient Use Efficiency. There is relationship between crude protein and reduction of reactive nitrogen. Feed content not only affects excreted nitrogen, but also pH of manure and total ammonia Cal nitrogen. It is complex abatement measure to quantify reduction of the emission because of impact of various environmental factors. In Latvia, the most common are sows cross breeds (Yorkshire × Landrace) and on January 1, 2019 the biggest group accounted was fattening pigs with average dry feed consumption per day from 0.33 kg (live weight from 5 to 6 kg) up to 3.6 kg (live weight from 80 to 120 kg) with crude protein value from 163.5 g to 155.3 g per 1 kg feed dry matter. Excreted nitrogen (Nex) was calculated for these groups of pigs less than suggested values in guidelines for emission calculation. The highest calculated total NH3 emission is from fattening pigs group with live weight from 55 to 90 kg although the highest calculated Nex is for lactating sows. NOx also calculates as NO2 and the highest value was 3.23 g per one lactating sow.

The aroma of coffee is the main quality factor. Compounds with floral, fruity, citrus and sometimes fermented aroma notes are defined as high quality characteristics for the specialty coffee brew. Commercial coffees mostly are at medium roast and the aroma profile is focused on balanced chocolate, caramel, toasted bread and almond bitterness aroma notes. These sensory characteristics set the focus for volatile compound profile analysis by Headspace solidphase microextraction (HS-SPME). The most popular fibres for commercial coffee aroma profile analysis are DVB/ CAR/PDMS, CAR/PDMS, PDMS/DVB and PA. There is limited research done about specialty coffee aroma profile and evaluation of more suitable fibres for solid-phase microextraction. The aim of the research is to evaluate the aroma composition of specialty coffee brews using different SPME fibres. Results demonstrated that CAR/PDMS fibre, compared to other fibres, can extract significantly more volatile compounds with higher peak areas in all chemical compound groups, except phenols. The CAR/PDMS was the only fibre which could detect all 17 important volatile compounds for specialty coffee. In conclusion, from the given research evidence, CAR/PDMS fibre is suggested as the most suitable SPME fibre coating for volatile compound extraction for specialty coffee brew import. The result provides evidence for improved specialty coffee aroma profile analysis by SPME.

Determination of organic acids in honey samples from Latvian market by high-performance liquid chromatography Honey is a naturally sweet product, which is produced by honeybees (Apis mellifera). Honey is a natural source of antioxidants and has been known to mankind since ancient times. Honey contains approximately 200 different compounds. Organic acids can be used as an indicator to detect the freshness, authenticity and acidity of honey. The aim of this research was to determine and quantify organic acids such as oxalic, L-tartaric, D-quinic, L-malic, L-ascorbic, citric, fumaric and succinic in honey samples from Latvian market u sing high-performance liquid chromatography. The chromatographic separation of organic acids was carried out with PerkinElmer C18 (4.6 mm Í 250 mm I.D, particle size 5 mm) analytical column at the temperature of 35 °C in wavelength at 210 nm. The obtained results showed that the analysed honey samples contain L-tartaric, D-quinic, L-malic, L-ascorbic, citric, fumaric and succinic acids. The concentration of these acids was found to be variable. Oxalic acid was not detected in the analysed honey samples. L-tartaric acid was the main acid in all analysed honey samples.

The preservation of local animal breeds is a topical theme in recent years. Latvian Brown (LB) and Latvian Blue (LZ) cow breeds are exhausting and must be preserved. It can be performed by the use of multiple ovulation and embryo transfer (MOET). The difficulties exist in choosing the gene-fond (GF) cows as donors caused by the small number of animals. Twenty-three cows were intended for donor cow’s role from different herds until September 2018, and twenty of them were accepted. Anamnesis, clinical examination, blood morphology (13 parameters) and biochemical indices (19 parameters) were analysed before MO induction. Three cows were rejected because of ovarian cysts or pyometra, negative energy balance (NEB) (glucose is less than 2.3 mmol LE−1 simultaneously with elevated ß-hydroxybutyric acid is greater than 1.4 mmol LE−1) and elevated (p is less than 0.05) number of leukocytes (28.20 x109 LE−1). More than 52.6% of cows had a repeated artificial insemination before the last parturition, and 5.3% of cows had lifeless offspring in the last parturition. The 1st and 2nd lactation cows were healthier than older cows (p is less than 0.05). The amount of albumins, cholesterol, triglycerides and Na, K, P, Cl, Mg was significantly different in donors with and without successfully obtained embryos (p is less than 0.05). In conclusion, not only acceptable clinical health but also the cow metabolic status is a decisive factor for success of MOET.